1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to the field of storage management and, more particularly, to software used in storage management.
2. Description of the Related Art
Computer systems typically include storage devices (or are coupled to access storage devices through, e.g., a network) for storing the software to be executed on the computer system, the data to be operated on by the software, and/or the data resulting from the execution of the software by the computer system. Growth continues in the amount of storage that is included in computer systems or to which computer systems have access. Additionally, different types of storage (e.g. network attached storage (NAS), storage area networks (SAN), etc.) continue to be developed and expanded.
In order to manage the use and operation of the storage devices, various storage management software has been developed. For example, file system software, volume managers, volume replicators, etc. have been developed to help effectively manage storage devices. Typically, such storage management software includes one or more modules of code that are included “inside” the operating system (executing with operating system privileges and/or interfacing closely with other operating system code). Thus, such storage management software requires the support of, or at least the permission of, the operating system vendors who make the operating systems for the computer systems on which the storage management software is to execute.
In many cases, the storage management software may be made available on several different operating system platforms. In these cases, different versions of the software must be maintained for each different operating system. Additionally, each time a given operating system changes, the corresponding version often must be modified and retested (and in some cases, recertified by the operating system vendor).
In the case of open source operating systems (e.g. Linux), the module that is incorporated in the operating system (and sometimes other parts of the storage management software) must be open-sourced for inclusion in the operating system. Thus, at least a portion of the storage management software becomes publicly available.
In the extreme, the operating system vendor may drop support/permission with regard to subsequently developed versions of the operating system. Additionally, the module may have to make use of unpublished application programming interfaces (APIs), which may be changed more freely and/or more often by the operation system vendor (and thus may require more frequent changes to the module and/or the storage management software as a whole).